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The fight for civil rights didn’t stop at the borders of Alabama or Mississippi, but stretched all the way to the Marshall Islands, the Sahara Desert, and the halls of the United Nations. For decades, African Americans have been portrayed mainly as fighters for domestic justice: voting rights, desegregation, police reform. But what if that’s only half the story? What if Black Americans were also among the first to challenge the most dangerous weapon of the 20th century – the atomic bomb – and in doing so, redefined peace as something far bigger than the absence of war?

This isn’t just a story about protests and peace signs. It’s about how Black Americans helped shape a radical global vision for justice. Through the lens of Vincent Intondi’s African Americans Against the Bomb and Rob Skinner’s Peace, Decolonization and the Practice of Solidarity, we uncover a rich but often overlooked legacy: Black America’s frontline role in the global anti-nuclear and anti-colonial movement. These two scholars peel back the layers of Cold War politics, racial injustice, and global resistance to reveal a truth that’s still deeply relevant today:

Hiroshima, Jim Crow, and a New Kind of Activism

When the mushroom clouds rose over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, the world changed forever. But while many Americans celebrated victory, a different voice emerged from within the United States. That voice refused to separate the violence of war abroad from the violence of racism at home. From church pulpits to United Nations podiums, African Americans were among the first to connect the dots between nuclear weapons, colonialism, and civil rights.

Just days after the bombings, Reverend J.E. Elliott delivered a sermon that shocked many: he condemned the atomic bomb. Not because he was a scientist or diplomat, but because, as a Black American, he saw something the rest of the country ignored. “Why was the bomb used against Japan, a nonwhite nation, instead of Germany? Why celebrate mass death while Black Americans still faced Jim Crow laws and lynchings at home?” – he asked.

That question echoed through Black churches, newspapers, and activist circles. Many African Americans activists saw a warning: the same country that bombed Japan with little hesitation was the one still lynching Black citizens, denying them education, housing, and political power. Figures like Du Bois, scientist Jasper Jeffries warned that nuclear weapons represented more than geopolitical power. Actually, they symbolized global racial control. To them, peace wasn’t just about avoiding war; it was about confronting the structures of racism, colonialism, and inequality that made war inevitable.

McCarthyism, the Cold War, and the Courage to Speak

The rise of Cold War anticommunism of the Red Scare era, however, turned “peace” into a dangerous word. Activists who opposed nuclear weapons were quickly branded “communists”, especially if they were Black. Central leaders who never stepped back got indicted and blacklisted. Petitioners for nuclear disarmament were harassed or jailed. Many civil rights leaders pulled back, fearing association with the left would harm their cause and fought for domestic civil rights goals. But others doubled down. They understood what was really at stake. As Intondi explains, Black activists were not following Moscow’s orders, they were following their conscience. They saw how Truman’s militarism, anti-communism, and racism were deeply intertwined. And they refused to trade silence for safety.

By the 1950s, African American activists were increasingly connecting the dots: nuclear tests weren’t just militaristic, they were colonial. When the U.S. tested hydrogen bombs at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, or when France chose the Algerian Sahara for its first nuclear detonation, it wasn’t a coincidence. These were inhabited, nonwhite regions, both  politically weak and geographically distant from Western metropoles.

African Americans saw their own struggle reflected in anti-colonial movements abroad. Civil rights activist joined African leaders, believing that racial justice at home could not be achieved without confronting imperialism abroad. Figures like Bayard Rustin and Michael Scott were fundamental at building transnational alliances grounded in non-violence, spiritual ethics, and shared resistance. Their work connected civil rights, nuclear disarmament, and African liberation into a single, global movement.
The biggest example of attempted transnational action of solidarity was in 1960, with the Sahara Project. It emerged as a bold example of anti-nuclear, anti-colonial direct action. The protest sought to physically block French nuclear tests in Africa. They failed to reach the test site, but their moral action catalyzed outrage across Africa and globally. Ghana froze French assets. Nkrumah and Nasser condemned the test. Demonstrations broke out from New York to Lagos. The failed attempt showed how solidarity wasn’t always smooth. Western activists often brought paternalistic attitudes. African nationalists grew frustrated with symbolic protests that didn’t confront the harsh realities of colonial power. The movement, though powerful, was marked by friction. Although unsuccessful, the Sahara Project was a turning point: “nuclear imperialism” became a rallying cry. The protests revealed the deep connections between nuclear power, colonialism, and racism, and forced Western peace activists to confront their own blind spots. The anti-nuclear movement could no longer ignore the legacies of empire.

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King, Coretta, and the Politics of Peace

In the U.S., during those years, the loudest voice was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

While he is often remembered for his civil rights leadership, his peace advocacy was equally profound. A decade before his famous Beyond Vietnam speech, he was already warning that nuclear war would make civil rights irrelevant. King consistently linked nuclear disarmament to economic justice, education, and nonviolence. He warned that “man now has atomic and nuclear weapons that could within seconds completely destroy the major cities of the world.”

King worked closely with SANE, a leading anti-nuclear group, and condemned the arms race as a theft from the poor. He called for disarmament, not just as policy, but as philosophy.

And while Dr. King became the face of this movement, Coretta Scott King was its soul. A committed pacifist before her husband, she worked with Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and Women Strike for Peace. She connected nuclear disarmament to racial justice long before it was mainstream.

As Skinner shows, these women didn’t just support the peace movement, they pushed it to face its own racism and exclusion. For them, peace and justice were inseparable.

Not all Black activists embraced nonviolence, and some also criticized King’s nonviolence. Malcolm X famously said, “You’ve been scarred by the atom bomb. We’ve been scarred by racism.” He linked Hiroshima to Harlem, Vietnam to Mississippi. For Malcolm, the global Black struggle was a fight against imperialism, whether it came in the form of colonialism or bombs. He saw Black liberation not as a domestic matter, but as part of a global revolt against empire and white supremacy.

The Black Panther Party continued this vision. Their founding documents condemned nuclear testing, colonial wars, and domestic oppression as part of the same system. Leaders like Huey Newton understood that real peace required revolutionary change.

What Peace Really Meant

For Black activists, peace was never abstract. It was the right to live free of fear, whether that fear came from a police baton in Alabama or a missile silo in Moscow. And peace wasn’t just a goal. It was a method. Nonviolence, solidarity, protest, education: these were acts of resistance and creation. They built new alliances, crossed borders, and challenged old empires. Yet, peace movements often fell short when they ignored race, hierarchy, or local voices. Solidarity is not just a shared belief, but it’s a practice, one shaped by trust, conflict, and constant negotiation.
Throughout the decades, activists, artists, clergy joined massive rallies, aiming at reminding the world that militarism always comes at the expense of the poor, the marginalized, the oppressed.

Today, we live in a world once again threatened by nuclear war, rising authoritarianism, and deep inequality. The story of Black American peace activism offers more than history, it offers a roadmap. It reminds us that real peace requires justice. That civil rights, anti-colonialism, and disarmament aren’t separate struggles. They are chapters of the same book. And that the fight for a just world will always be met with resistance, but also, with radical hope.

As Dr. King said, “It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it.”